Letter to Our Readers: Rivard Report Adds New Talent in the New Year

(from left) Newly announced hires Emily Donaldson, Rick Casey, and Brendan Gibbons are set to join the Rivard Report in 2018.

Updated January 4, 2018

To Our Readers:

As we work to sharpen and deepen our coverage of San Antonio in its Tricentennial year and beyond, we are excited to announce three new hires who start this month to help us do that.

– Rick Casey, an acclaimed former newspaper columnist and KLRN-TV public affairs talk show host in San Antonio, will join the Rivard Report as a contributing editor with the launch of a weekly podcast offering analysis and insights on local news stories and the players behind the news.

– Brendan Gibbons, a prize-winning environmental reporter formerly at the San Antonio Express-News and the​ ​Scranton​ ​Times-Tribune,​ will cover the environment, energy, and water issues.

– Emily Donaldson, a former Community Impact correspondent in Houston and Austin, will report on the area’s Pre-K-12 schools and students, with a focus on schools in underserved areas of the city, education trends, and the city’s institutions of higher education.

Casey, Gibbons, and Donaldson together bring a rich mix of experience, talent, expertise, and enthusiasm to our editorial team. We expect you will quickly notice and benefit from their contributions. We are delighted to have them on board.

They join a smart and committed staff of editors and reporters devoted not only to breaking news, but, more importantly, to providing thoughtful and judicious analysis and profiles of the dominant players, policies, and politics behind the news.

We will continue to focus on core issues that define San Antonio’s present and will determine its future – city and county politics and management; education; the environment; health; business, with a special focus on tech; urban development; neighborhoods; and arts and culture.

We aim to explain how developments in those core coverage areas affect the city’s residents now, and how they might enhance or harm their futures. And, as always, we invite and depend upon Rivard Report readers to weigh in with their observations and commentary, so we can fully and accurately represent community views, discourse, and debate.

"One measure of growth as the Report turns six years old next month is that some of our journalists have moved on to pursue other opportunities, while others, some familiar, some new to San Antonio, take their place and help us evolve along with the city we serve," said Robert Rivard, co-founder and publisher. "I know Beth and her team will have more such news to report in the coming months. We deeply appreciate our many individual and business donors who make this growth and service to community possible."

Bonnie Arbittier / Rivard Report

Rick Casey

Casey will help us do that by deconstructing the city’s news and developments via a weekly podcast. An award-winning veteran journalist, Casey brings a wealth of knowledge about San Antonio from four decades of reporting on the city, including as a metro columnist both for the former San Antonio Light and, later, the San Antonio Express-News. (He also served a 10-year stint as a columnist at the Houston Chronicle.)

Casey returned to San Antonio – a city from which, as he recently put it, he “can’t seem to stay away” – to host Texas Week With Rick Casey from 2011-2017 on KLRN-TV, the local PBS affiliate. The show was canceled in September. (Earlier last year, Casey made national news when a commentary he wrote was pulled by station management until public outcry led to its eventual broadcast.)

“At a time when local news institutions are under considerable stress, the Rivard Report is offering a new, web-based approach to covering the exciting developments and crucial challenges of a changing San Antonio,” Casey said about becoming a contributing editor to the Rivard Report. “I’m excited to join the Report’s talented and growing team.

“I especially look forward to doing a weekly podcast with Editor Beth Frerking in which we will assess and analyze the week’s news,” he said, adding, “Don’t miss it.”

Bonnie Arbittier / Rivard Report

Rick Casey, Rivard Report contributing editor

Casey has won numerous journalism awards, including the Molly, named after the late columnist Molly Ivins, for his columns on immigration while at the Houston Chronicle, and, twice, the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors award as best general columnist in the state. A resident of the King William neighborhood with his wife, Kristen, Casey is currently working on a memoir about his career covering San Antonio.

"San Antonio is right in the center of big environmental tug-of-wars over clean air, clean water, and changing wildlife habitats,” Gibbons said. “I'm excited to share my reporting on these issues with the Rivard Report’s engaged readers."

Bonnie Arbittier / Rivard Report

Brendan Gibbons, Rivard Report environment and energy reporter

A 2013 University of Missouri graduate in science and agricultural journalism, Gibbons earned some practical knowledge of his beat through college internships studying birds for the U.S. Forest Service, and as an office assistant in a plant science lab in Missouri.

He is a Texas Master Naturalist pledge, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and an avid hiker, skier, and mountain biker. And he plays the tenor sax. Gibbons is married to Westyn Hinchey Gibbons, director of digital marketing and public relations for the Institute for Women’s Health and its affiliated Advanced Fertility Center in San Antonio.

Donaldson made her mark covering education for Community Impact newspapers, first in the Houston area, reporting on the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, and, more recently in Austin, providing statehouse coverage of public education, local governmental control, and health care issues.

Donaldson, a Houston native, also worked with the company’s digital editors to implement a digital strategy that increased social media following and engagement in the Cy-Fair edition by 200 percent.

“Local journalism provides the most important tool for readers who want to affect change in their communities,” Donaldson said about her move to the Rivard Report. “I’m excited to be part of a team that is equipping readers with the knowledge to engage in relevant local discussions and to better San Antonio.”

A 2015 graduate of the University of Missouri with bachelor degrees in political science and in journalism, Donaldson said she was drawn to education reporting after an internship with a news wire service in the Missouri statehouse.

“I loved seeing individuals with incredibly different backgrounds — at the time, the deputy commissioner had attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse while the commissioner was a product of an inner-city district — come together to improve education for the state’s children,” she wrote in an email about her experiences there.

Scott Ball / Rivard Report

Emily Donaldson, Rivard Report education reporter

Donaldson is a runner who completed her first half-marathon in September. She was also part of a trivia team in Austin that met weekly to compete.

Casey, Gibbons, and Donaldson join a team of three business team staffers, led by chief operating officer Jenna Mallette, and more than a dozen editors, full-time reporters, and freelance contributors at the Rivard Report. Rivard and his wife, Monika Maeckle, launched the publication as an online news and analysis blog nearly six years ago, on February 13, 2012.

Within a year, the publication boasted two other employees, reporter Iris Dimmick, now managing editor, and photographer Scott Ball, now the photo editor. The Rivard Report officially became a nonprofit news organization in August 2015.

Rick Casey is one the finest journalists I have had the good fortune to read dating back to his days on the St. Mary’s Rattler. What good fortune for all of us to have him with you. He makes a good product even greater.

Gibbons is the latest Express-News staffers to get poached by another news org — or to simply walk out on the SAEN (because it’s gotten that bad there). Simply can’t deny that management at the city’s daily paper has no answer or strategy to implement against what is now a running years-long exodus of editorial talent.

In this case, it has to burn pretty deep that for the SAEN editors to lose their enviro reporter to the cross-town rival. But, honestly, that would also assume that the SAEN editors were even cognizant that another reporter has left.

Good moves Bob! We have had a void since Rick left and it is high time the void is filled. And the new folks are welcome additions too. We need their expertise in education and environment more than ever…especially when we have to step up with more resources and solutions locally. And please send Mr Gibbons over to talk with us about the San Pedro Creek and other water projects that SARA manages. We look forward to meeting him!

Emily Donaldson is an excellent journalist! I had the priviledge of working with her at Community Impact Newspaper and always found her stories to be extremely well written and compelling. She really embraces the essence of local news. Your readers are in for a treat!

I’m very familiar with Casey. He does a great job. I can’t believe KRLN cancelled his show. But then again why did they put April Ancira as host of the Arts program. A lot of politics even on public television. Go figure.

I see nowhere to contact anyone and would like to find out the cost to place an ad. I am the broker/owner of Cooper Realty and was at the housing forecast today and am interested in finding out more about ad costs. Please contact me.
Connie Cooper
210-410-8991

Connie,
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A few weeks ago Mr. Rivard spoke at our Downtown Rotary Meeting and I was very impressed with his presentation on the Rivard Report as were the other Rotarians.
I personally think the Rivard Report provides information everyone should have access to and follow.
Yolanda “Yo” Delgado